| iron_megalith said: let me rephrase it. If it's possible I'd keep the processor and just change the board and RAM. |
Anything is possible. But its what you want to do down the road. If you want to slowly replace all your hardware then you need a very vesitial mother board. One thats am2/am2+/am3 if your going to upgrade AMD down the road if your thinking about Intel well you know the story. The link below is a few ASUS boards that are all those slots and an AM3 cpu will run in a am2+ slot if the bios is updated on most boards. I favor ASUS boards becasue iv never had a problem with them but others could be good ask around.
So going that way you might not need new ram if your running ddr2 just add some to it if the bus is right for the board. Personaly i wouldnt go above 4 gigs for gaming but if your going to mess around with 3dmax get as much as the board holds, as far as photoshop i dont know iv never got that far into it to see if it will eat 4 gigs of ram.
On another note you said you where looking at 700-1200 dollars? is that USD? either way thats a whole new rig right there and a good one at that im running AMD 965, V8 coolmaster, DDR3 1600 mhz, Sapphire 5850, ASUS Crosshair Formula 3, Corsair 750 watt psu. That set up was around 1300 usd new. Im happy with it but its over kill unless i put it on my 120 hz tv.
What kinda power supply do you have the whole model number if you could so i can look at the rails. Also you play BFBC2 and looking at playing crysis 2? From what iv read crysis 2 isnt going to pound a system like the 1st one did but still take some power. What resolution are you running at also that plays a big part in all this
*EDIT*
Also keeping mind that video editing is VERY cpu intensive
